Pregnant woman, girl wounded in Helena shooting, police seek suspect

A pregnant woman and a girl were wounded at 501 Elm Street in Helena, prompting Helena-West Helena police to search for suspects and warning neighbors not to approach Darron Williams if they saw him.

Officers were called to the home around 3 p.m. after a report that multiple people had been shot. When they arrived, they found Cathy Henry injured and a girl with an apparent gunshot wound to her lower extremities. The child was taken to a hospital and listed in noncritical condition. Henry was airlifted to Regional One Hospital in Memphis, and police believed she may have been in critical condition because of an injury to her lower abdomen.

Investigators later said they were looking into 20-year-old Darron Williams and described him as armed and dangerous. WREG reported that police were also seeking 19-year-old Kourtney Gamble in connection with the same shooting. Anonymous information described a gold, four-door Impala with no license plate and four Black men inside as being involved.

Police initially named another person of interest, then removed that name after learning the person was a minor. That change underscored how quickly the case was developing and how carefully officers were trying to separate public safety warnings from unverified information.

The shooting at a residential address in the 500 block of Elm Street put a sharp focus on violence in Helena-West Helena, where family members and neighbors were left to absorb the news that a pregnant woman and a child had been hit. It also raised immediate questions about who else may have been involved and whether anyone in the area remained at risk.

Helena-West Helena police asked anyone with information to call the department at (870) 572-3441. The case became part of a larger pattern of serious shootings and homicide investigations that continued to strain the city in later years, leaving residents to measure each new gunfire report against an ongoing public-safety crisis.